It's her! Investigating relationship development with social AI chatbots.

As social AI chatbots become increasingly integrated into everyday lives, users form unique parasocial relationships with their digital companions. To understand the antecedents, mechanisms, and experiences of such relationships, we conducted a multi-methods study to investigate how the perceived human-likeness of social AI chatbots fosters emotional attachment, and how this effect might be mediated via increased user gratifications and heightened chatbot interactions. The quantitative results of our preregistered study with 550 participants from 64 countries showed that perceived human-likeness was a strong driver of attachment. As hypothesized, the results suggested that the effect was mediated by gratifications and interactions. The qualitative analyses demonstrated that social AI chatbots played a special role in the lives of many users, transforming habits, interactions, and relationships. In the words of one participant: "AI chatbots gave me a new life".